At the time bowling reached its peak of popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, it had changed very little (ten pins instead of nine) since first played by the ancient Egyptians. However, over the past 15 or so years, the recreational activity of bowling has undergone profound changes.
In terms of organized league bowling, bowlers have abandoned the sport by the millions and bowling alleys have disappeared by the hundreds. The American Bowling Congress, the sanctioning body for men, has seen its membership shrink 50 percent, with the loss of 2.4 million men since 1980. A similar, 51 percent drop in membership (2.1 million women) has been experienced by the Women's International Bowling Congress. At the same time, one in five bowling alleys across the country has closed. Explanations for this decline in interest have been many and varied.
Academics have linked the decline in league bowling to the rise in asocial entertainment, such as video games. Americans no longer find they need to bond in groups, as bowling leagues once allowed them to do. Others say this sport has been hurt by everything from its blue-collar image to the growth of fitness clubs, two-income families, and to various forms of in-home entertainment.
Bowling has also experienced a great technological makeover. In the early 1980s, urethane replaced the more flammable lacquer as the protective coating over the wooden lanes. Less conditioning oil is soaked up by urethane-coated lanes, making them "faster." Since the old hard rubber and plastic-coated balls would not hook well on the new surfaces, they were soon replaced by highly-engineered "reactive" urethane balls.
In the past five years, more and more engineering has been devoted to the placement and action of the internal weight blocks of a bowling ball. Depending upon the mix of urethane and resin, the hardness of the shell, the placement of the weight block, and the angle of the finger grips, a bowling ball can be obtained that "breaks" hard or easy, short or long; one that performs well in oil or another than is better on dryer lanes.
The downside to all of this technology is that bowling balls have gotten expensive--two hundred dollars, and even more, is not an unusual price to pay for a modern bowling ball. As is the case with other sports, such an increase in costs will result in a decrease in the number of younger bowlers (who traditionally have less discretionary income). The long-term catastrophic result of such a trend has not been lost upon bowling equipment manufacturers and bowling alley operators. In addition to changes in semantics and promotional emphasis (bowling centers, not alleys and "channels," not gutters), the world of "cosmic bowling" debuted at a Chicago bowling alley in the summer of 1995.
In bowling centers located throughout the country, as midnight approaches, the lights go out, laser beams flash, smoke machines pump fog, and dance music blasts. Then, the lanes start to shimmer, the pins turn purple, and the balls glow neon pink, orange, and yellow. Bowlers too go through a remarkable transformation, the middle-age bowlers disappear to be replaced by junior high and high school kinds--a crowd that has traditionally not considered bowling to be a wild night on the town.
Unfortunately for bowling center operators, this generational magic comes at a steep capital cost. The requirements to install a new stereo system, smoke machines, laser lights, banks of "black lights", and UV-responsive coatings on pins, balls, and lanes can exceed tens of thousands of dollars. A need thus exists to enable operators of bowling centers to take advantage of this renewed interest in bowling expressed by younger adults by being able to convert their lanes to a "cosmic Bowling"-style without requiring the operator to first invest the significant (and likely unavailable) capital funds required for purchasing and installing expensive equipment.